March for Rash Judgments

This past weekend in the U.S. an amazing and edited viral video took us into a horrible world of rash judgments.

The event happened after the March for Life, which protests abortion and is held every January, when a pro-life group of high school students from Covington Catholic High School was waiting for their departing bus near the Lincoln Memorial and other protesters approached them. That other small protest group proceeded to yell horrible anti-Catholic slurs at these Covington boys--think what is the worst thing someone can call a Catholic given the Sex Abuse scandal and yes, that's what they called these kids.

Some Covington kids wore “Make America Great Again” hats. I suppose in DC that gives people the excuse to attack them. Yet, I have to wonder why the DC police gave permits to the other groups and allowed them to be there at the same time, as the police have a lot of control over who, when and where people gather. The March for Life is a big gathering, as the hotels and restaurants who benefit from the crowds can attest.

Then, after these high school boys endured all those comments about being incest babies, another group, made up of Native American activists, walked over and stopped in front of a Covington student named Nick Sandmann and beat a drum close to his face. Nick smiled or as some have suggested, smirked. That was all he did.

The punishment for this “crime?"

The media took a brief video that showed the kids from Covington chanting school slogans (like the ones kids say at basketball games) and mistakenly argued the boys from Covington shouted “build the wall” which anyone who took the time to watch the two hour video would know never happened. Even if they had, so what?

A Native American activist, Nathan Phillips, gave many interviews saying he felt threatened by the boys.

Well, the question remains, why did he approach them then? I actually read a quote saying the boys threw beer cans at Mr. Phillips. How would kids at the March get beer?

Unfortunately, the Ivy League educated news journalists from places like The Washington Post, The New York Times, or The Detroit Free Press, ran their news reports based on the two minute edited footage of the event. I suppose they had a deadline, but would it have been too much for their readers to expect them to actually do a little research and watch the entire two hour video? Or at least call the boys or their chaperones to get their side of the story? Or don't they want to be fair?

What happened instead is a bunch of celebrities tweeted their hatred of the "racist" boys, calling for them to be doxxed--which happened when the boys' names, addresses, and phone numbers were published on Twitter and they got death threats. An internet crowd wrote to their colleges of choice asking for them to be unadmitted. Some celebrities, with their massive following, even called for them to be beaten up. Sadly, the celebrities are not apologizing now that the entire two hour video has been viewed by a lot of honest folks.

After what I witnessed in the media, I told my kids if anything like this happens to them, call 911 and report they are being harassed by adults.

What is far worse than the secular media's handling of this situation is how the Catholic school in Covington, Kentucky handled the situation. They had a huge sign over their school website saying they condemned the boys from their school and apologized to Mr. Phillips.

I even wrote to the bishop of Covington--he and the school had the same banner on their websites Saturday night. I told him to stop throwing those pro-life high school kids under the bus to get good press from the pro-abortion media.

I was shocked to discover even the March for Life at one point over the weekend condemned these innocent Covington kids as well. Remember, these boys went to the March and donated their efforts to further their cause for unborn babies. Going to the March isn't easy. My high school kid went this year and it's cold, crowded, and they walk a long way to march and then back to the bus which is always parked far away. It is a sacrifice.

The bishop of Covington, Kentucky, the boys' high school principal, journalists throughout the country, and the greater Catholic community owe those Covington high school boys an awful big apology. Covington's bishop, Catholic high school principal, and others have made it a lot harder for decent parents to explain to good kids why they should bother with social justice.